


Guardian

by PreludeInZ



Series: DrabbleRouser [10]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: AU, Death, Derivative, F/M, Fluff, Nutty Libertarian hippies, Romance, Utterly nonsensical variation in tenses, spaceship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 13:23:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2623271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/PreludeInZ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TL;DR - Expiration Date in Space</p><p>This is a nonsensical AU which is set on a spaceship, because I read The Green Hills of Earth. Then I wept, as I always do when I read The Green Hills of Earth. Go read The Green Hills of Earth. Fucking cry, because you will never touch the majesty that is Heinlein, even if he was a nutty libertarian hippy. This is just the intro.</p><p>The Green Hills of Earth</p><p>Let the sweet fresh breezes heal me<br/>As they rove around the girth<br/>Of our lovely mother planet<br/>Of the cool, green hills of Earth.</p><p>We’ve tried each spinning space mote<br/>And reckoned its true worth:<br/>Take us back again to the homes of men<br/>On the cool, green hills of Earth.</p><p>The arching sky is calling<br/>Spacemen back to their trade.<br/>ALL HANDS! STAND BY! FREE FALLING!<br/>And the lights below us fade.</p><p>Out ride the sons of Terra,<br/>Far drives the thundering jet,<br/>Up leaps a race of Earthmen,<br/>Out, far, and onward yet —-</p><p>We pray for one last landing<br/>On the globe that gave us birth;<br/>Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies<br/>And the cool, green hills of Earth.</p><p>~Robert A. Heinlein</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guardian

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashmandalc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashmandalc/gifts).



> chocolate-and-creamcake asked:  
>  guardian :)

**Scout/Pauling - Guardian**

_Final Entry  
Logbook of Sentinel Class Warship - 2FRT Guardian_

She would not believe him about the engine room. She would sit in her captain’s chair on the bridge and she would grind her teeth at him and narrow her eyes and she would think he didn’t understand. She would think he was stupid, and that there was no way in the world he could be telling her the truth. She would draw a long drag from her electronic cigarette. It would not be as good as the real thing.

Her second-in-command was comatose in the infirmary, and the  _boy_  before her wasn’t wearing the Blue of the Engineering line, nor the regal Purple of Command. He wore Red, for combat. The winged foot insignia of the Scout class. He belonged in a little fighter of his own, surveying meteorites, dog fighting with drones in low orbit around the silver grey moon, but the comms were down, and she needed someone running messages all over the rest of the ship. His fighter, beautiful and precious to him, it had burnt to hell anyway. It’d been a miracle he’d ejected in time, a chance in a million that he’d been picked up by the Heavy, whose ship wasn’t really built to maneuver that tightly. There wasn’t anything else he could do.

"So vent out the rear exhaust, compensate for the roll over by inverting the starboard engine."

He would be afraid of her, but determined, weary and sore. But right, even if he didn’t really know what he was talking about. He knew he’d brought a message from people who did. “Ma’am, respect, but I’m tryin’ to tell you we  _can’t_. I don’t know all the reasons. You want me to run back an’ forth between the bridge an’ the engines eight or nine more times…we’re gonna burn up in atmo, in the time it’d take me to explain the problem.”

She was furious. Not with him, but it was hard not to feel like it. “The options you’ve presented are unacceptable.”

"Ma’am, I ain’t wild about ‘em either. It’s gotta be done manually, you gotta tell us who to send."

Her silence was worse than her tearing, contemptuous voice over the comms. Her eyes were black like fire in the void, because nothing burned in the void, it was just empty.

He asked a question, not the one he’d been sent to ask, clearly there was no answer to that forthcoming. “The…your lieutenant, ma’am. Is…she’ll be okay, right? Was just a shock off the console, when the core overloaded. She’s gonna be okay?” He shrank slightly, for fear of the answer. “It’s only they…they won’t let me in the medical bay.”

"If we manage to land, she may make it. They wouldn’t let me in, either."

Oh god. He needed an answer to the question he’d been sent to ask. He’d get one himself. “We’ll draw straws, ma’am. To see who resets the core. It’s only fair. I know we can’t spare the Medic, or the Engineer. The rest of us, though. It’s only fair.”

She would glare him down. “Fine. Do that. Report back.”

He would take a handful of straws from the galley. He would bite the end off one, and draw it first. He would take the long ones around to the others, let them draw their dying wishes, say his own secret goodbyes. He would stop at the medical bay, not allowed in. Touch the door, once, apologize for not taking the chance that he should have, and just asking if she wanted to get coffee sometime.

When he got back to the bridge to report the decision, the captain would have set the autopilot. She would have gone to the reactor room herself. She would have put in the codes, overridden it manually. She would have burned, glorious and black as the void, as they ghosted homeward, on the auxiliary power she’d sacrificed herself for.

In a month, when Lieutenant Pauling woke up in the hospital aboard the space station where she was recovering, the Scout would hold her while she cried, over the story he’d told her of how they’d landed.

O, Captain. Her Captain.


End file.
